2015 Lawn thread

[jagnet]

Well this gardening malarkey doesn't half save on gym membership fees. Nearly killed myself moving the contents of compost bin #3 across to #2 to make room for all the detritus from scarifying.

The scarifying is now done. Four passes, finishing at the machine's maximum depth. It was struggling a little at that point, but it managed in the end. Impressive amounts of organic matter came out of the lawn despite there being no moss and no noticeable thatch issues; I think it pretty much worked out at a full barrow load for every 10m2.

I've also made a start on aerating. Given the compaction issues and noticeably heavier soil at the bottom of the lawn I'm going a bit more industrial with the aeration holes and using a 3/4" auger bit in the SDS drill then back filling with loamy sand. It's time consuming but effective, and I can go much deeper than I would normally be able to, although it's likely that I'll need to top dress a second time as things settle.

My new grass seeds are now soaking in a bucket so I'll need to crack on with things ready for when they show signs of germinating. These bent seeds really are tiny - new lawn seeding rates are just 8gm/m2.

My soil test came back from Pitchcare this week. Potassium and Magnesium were both spot on, but pH and Phosphorus were a touch high. I've already made a start on getting the pH down by applying sulphuric acid (diluted) to the lawn during the rain the other night. Hopefully I'll get the chance to do the same again before putting the seed down, then use some longer term acidification strategies to get it down to a pH of around 6 from the current 6.8.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

_bryan_ said:

Just read through the whole thread, and inspired by Dr.Mike I'm going to do the same and start from scratch.

Good man! I'll look forward to seeing how yours progresses. Looking at your location, you need to crack on with it without delay; I'd think about digging it up just a week after glyphosating to give your grass seed as much time as possible. At least it should get plenty of rain!

jagnet said:

Well this gardening malarkey doesn't half save on gym membership fees. Nearly killed myself moving the contents of compost bin #3 across to #2 to make room for all the detritus from scarifying.

Er... Call me simple, but couldn't you have put the detritus into bin #2?

jagnet said:

Given the compaction issues and noticeably heavier soil at the bottom of the lawn I'm going a bit more industrial with the aeration holes and using a 3/4" auger bit in the SDS drill then back filling with loamy sand.

You're drilling holes in your lawn? Brilliant - have you thought about fracking while you're at it?

jagnet said:

then use some longer term acidification strategies to get it down to a pH of around 6 from the current 6.8.

I'm interested in what your long-term acidification techniques are. With a finer lawn, it might be worth my while doing something like that.

[Mallinson1984]

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

Just got back from a week away, after glyphosating my lawn - and it's not looking too bad. Just a few greenish bits that could do with an extra dose, and one small patch that I missed completely. I'll spray those this afternoon.

Irritatingly, every single dandelion is absolutely fine!



The scarifier is arriving on Thursday, so there's still time for the rest to die.

Following this very closely as I intend re-doing the whole of our back garden once were moved in. At present the current owners have well overstocked the garden and just have far to many things going in (IMO), everything is overgrown and what lawn there is in there is terrible so my intention is to start again from seed.

The rear garden is roughly 100m long and averages our around 10.5m wide... I intend starting at the very back and working my way back towards the house creating an orchard, raised vegetable garden and greenhouses then coming onto nice sized formal lawn for the dogs & kids and finally large patio off the back of the house for BBQ's and entertaining. May be into next year before I make any real progress and get stuck in but will take some photo's along the way and put a thread on here if anyone's interested.

Front garden (roughly 20m x 10.5m) is also an eyesore IMO too but that will be a few years down the line once I have the rear sorted and Mrs M has the inside up to scratch...

[jagnet]

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

Er... Call me simple, but couldn't you have put the detritus into bin #2?

Dammit!

There is a logical reason for it, I think. Mostly it gives me a rare chance to turn the compost, and also #2 is the strongest - given that the whole thing was once a shed and was only really intended as a temporary solution, it has one or two underlying structural issues However, as with all the best temporary structures, it's managing to last well beyond its intended lifespan with the occasional repair.

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

You're drilling holes in your lawn? Brilliant - have you thought about fracking while you're at it?

I'm holding out hope for oil; an old nodding donkey as a centre piece would make a great talking point. I'm not convinced the OH would agree though. After she saw me reading A Rudimentary Treatise on Well-Digging I was informed that I'm not to dig a well in the garden. Thwarted, for now.

Apparently next door's 2 year old boy was fascinated with my drilling of the lawn - "daddy, can we get a drill like that" I'm just waiting to see myself mentioned in the Odd things your neighbours do? thread.

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

I'm interested in what your long-term acidification techniques are. With a finer lawn, it might be worth my while doing something like that.

I think it's going to be a combination of things. I'm not so keen on sulphur alone as its effects can be quite patchy, especially in granular form, so I might apply just a little powdered sulphur with the top dressing as part of it. I might also go back to more regular applications of iron sulphate. I'll probably make more use of ammonium sulphate as a fertiliser next year as well.

I think what might work best though, is to rig up a Bernoulli tube type arrangement before the water sprinklers to slowly dose the lawn with a sulphuric acid solution from one of the water butts. If the resulting mix comes out at say 5 to 6 pH, long term it's going to bring the overall pH down nice and evenly without damaging the grass or the soil life, whilst being quicker to do so than relying on the above methods alone. And it's sulphuric acid, which is awesome

[jagnet]

Mallinson1984 said:

The rear garden is roughly 100m long and averages our around 10.5m wide... I intend starting at the very back and working my way back towards the house creating an orchard, raised vegetable garden and greenhouses then coming onto nice sized formal lawn for the dogs & kids and finally large patio off the back of the house for BBQ's and entertaining. May be into next year before I make any real progress and get stuck in but will take some photo's along the way and put a thread on here if anyone's interested.

Always interested in garden renovation photos

Sadly no oil or gas reserves were found under my lawn today. The earthworm problem's getting worse though



Drilling and filling completed today and about a kilo of powdered sulphur added, which I'm sure everyone in the immediate area appreciated on such a hot sunny day

Rain forecast for tomorrow afternoon, so I need to crack on and complete the top dressing beforehand.

[Mallinson1984]

jagnet said:

Always interested in garden renovation photos

Sadly no oil or gas reserves were found under my lawn today. The earthworm problem's getting worse though



Drilling and filling completed today and about a kilo of powdered sulphur added, which I'm sure everyone in the immediate area appreciated on such a hot sunny day

Rain forecast for tomorrow afternoon, so I need to crack on and complete the top dressing beforehand.

I'm impressed Jagnet! I think Mrs M would have kittens if she saw me performing such actions! She was absolutely mortified the last time I attacked it with the rake and manually scarified it... (Note to self not to undertake this task again without hiring a machine!) The improvement in the lawn following was also mentioned a month or so later though

[jagnet]

thanks! Fortunately the OH is remarkably tolerant of my 'good ideas' when it comes to the lawn, just so long as whatever it is doesn't involve damaging her border plants. Having said that she hasn't yet noticed that some of the Hellebores may no longer be where they were a couple of weeks ago, and that the lawn may have expanded a little in that direction. I'm pleading innocence.

[R8VXF]

Moving plants around to confuse SWMBO, haven't tried that trick yet...

[_bryan_]

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

_bryan_ said:

Just read through the whole thread, and inspired by Dr.Mike I'm going to do the same and start from scratch.

Good man! I'll look forward to seeing how yours progresses. Looking at your location, you need to crack on with it without delay; I'd think about digging it up just a week after glyphosating to give your grass seed as much time as possible. At least it should get plenty of rain!

Thanks for the advice. Only problem is, thanks to our glorious weather my day of glyphosate has turned into a day in front of the TV watching BTCC. The rain is set to carry on for a few days yet. If I don't get this done in the next week, am I leaving it too late in the year?? I'm putting hopes on us getting our usual spout of an Indian in September and that it'll be ok.

The way I see it I have 3 options...

Option 1, put down glyphosate this week, then a week later scarify over and over until all the grass is gone and hire a cultivator to turn over all the soil. Once I've done that I can get a level (I say level but the whole garden is sloped) from edge to edge so that I can establish a height to put in edging bricks. Once the bricks are in I can then finish the soil up to the edges and throw down the seed, problem is this could take a week or two taking me to the middle of September before the seed is down.

Option 2, do the same as above, but leave the re-seeding until Spring.

Option 3, just put the edging bricks down this year, and hope that I can get the level not too far from right. It shouldn't be that far out, it's just that at the moment my edges slope downward towards the edge causing the lawnmower to ground out, hence me wanting to level it from edge to edge.

I'm liking option 2 the best at the moment, it'll just mean re-applying weedkiller in the spring and a quick once over with the rake hopefully.

Open to suggestions...

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

IMHO middle of September will be fine. Probably no later than that, though. A lot depends on your local climate, which in your neck of the woods could turn on whether you're on the windward side of a hill (cooler and wetter) or the leeward side (warmer and drier) - Google the Föhn effect, but be prepared to be bored senseless about lapse rates (unless you're a bit of an aviation weather geek like me). Most wind is broadly from the west, so if you're on the eastern side of a hill you'll tend to get a couple of degrees higher but slightly less rain (which you can easily compensate for with the sprinkler).

Personally I've been disappointed by Spring germination - the soil takes a long time to warm up, and that's what governs germination; I'd go for it now, as soon as you can!

Interested to hear what Mr Jagnet thinks, because he's way more knowledgeable than me...

Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Sunday 23 August 19:35

[_bryan_]

We get quite a bit of wind as we live at the top of a hill, it's downhill in all directions.

I never thought about the soil needing to warm up, it's a very good point. Crack on with option no.1 I think, hopefully with a starter fertiliser I should be ok. Just need some dry weather now so that the glyphosate can get to work!

Any recommendations for a cheap seed/fertiliser spreader? I don't trust myself to do it accurately by hand!

[Simpo Two]

_bryan_ said:

Any recommendations for a cheap seed/fertiliser spreader? I don't trust myself to do it accurately by hand!

Seed you can do visually, and it doesn't matter if it's a bit uneven. As far as fertiliser goes, be careful because the amount of active ingredient (ai) a generic spreader will put down will vary depending on the granule size and concentration of ai in it.

The fertiliser should have a recommended dose rate in g/m2. There may be a specific spreader for it; if not get one you can adjust the dose rate on. To find out what dose of your fertiliser each setting gives, use the product over a metre square of hard surface, then sweep up and weigh.

[jagnet]

R8VXF said:

Moving plants around to confuse SWMBO, haven't tried that trick yet...

It's great fun, I get hours of entertainment from it She has her revenge though, by frequently leaving hand tools to get buried in the compost heaps - by my reckoning there must currently be a couple in there somewhere.

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

Personally I've been disappointed by Spring germination - the soil takes a long time to warm up, and that's what governs germination; I'd go for it now, as soon as you can!

Yep, given the choice I much prefer autumn for seed germination. As Dr Mike says, it's all about the soil temperature rather than the air temperature (which when forecast aren't given as ground level temps), with about 8 deg C being the critical temperature iirc, although some grass types and cultivars are better at germinating in cooler conditions than others. Also, because germination is such a slow process, the temperature fluctuations around those minimum temperatures can be a significant factor.

The other disadvantage of spring v autumn germination is that the root systems are still under developed come summer, so making the grass far more prone to drought stress than autumn sown grasses which have had six plus months to develop their roots before summer.

That said, for a domestic lawn then spring sowing isn't bad by any means and if time and conditions mean that autumn sowing isn't possible I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. Better to get the ground sorted properly and then wait than rush it and struggle to correct those problems over the next few years because there's now a lawn on top.

Covering the seed in germination mats or chitting it before sowing can speed up the germination process if you are running out of time.

[Turbodiesel1976]

Looking green due to all the rain we've been having

[_bryan_]

So....the plan was to glyphosate tonight! Went out to b&q to get a new rosette for the watering can, half way there we get stuck in traffic for two hours due to an accident, no one hurt but took a while to clear up!!

Honestly, fate is telling me I'm not supposed to do this lawn! Anyway, I'm off tomorrow so hopefully weather will be on my side...before pictures as promised:

[jagnet]

I managed to get a quick photo of the lawn today in between periods of rain now that the top dressing is down:



There's rather less grass than normal visible now as a result of the dead patches that I'd glyphosated, the bottom corner being completely redone, and some heavier quantities of top dressing in some areas.

Ideally I would have sifted the sharp sand as well as the compost and topsoil, but tbh by that stage I was getting wholly fed up with sifting. As a result there's some larger pieces of grit than I'd like, but I think I'll get away with it, even with the especially tiny bent grass seeds. We'll find out soon enough.

I also made the error of not accounting for the fact that the surface had dried considerably between my initial scarifying and the subsequent lighter scarification to pick up / break up the post drilling debris. I really should have set it a little higher still and as a result it didn't cut cleanly. Not the end of the world though.

Including the renovated corner, the drilling and filling and the top dressing I've used just over a whole year's worth of compost production, countless bags of sharp sand and reincorporated almost all of the soil dug out from the corner as well as some fresh top soil.

Also incorporated was volcanic rock dust at 0.5kg per m2 (making it 1k per m2 over the season) plus my charcoal mix which worked out at about 1.5 litres of ground charcoal per 10 m2. Other additions include sulphur, iron and used coffee grouts.

I'm fairly happy with how things are looking. Even with the rain the ground feels much firmer after scarifying thanks to the loss of significant amounts of organic matter from the surface. The troublesome corner seems to be draining very nicely now, as does the rest of the lawn thanks to those drilled holes, which thankfully don't seem to be showing signs of opening back up so hopefully they are reasonably well filled in.

The slow process of smoothing out some of the compound curves in the lawn from the banked area continues. Part of the banking is still far too steep for my liking and so has to be maintained at a higher cut than the rest of the lawn, although it does add some three dimensional interest to the lawn. Those curves make levelling the top dressing tricky and I find myself wandering around the lawn, crouching down lute in hand, like a golfer sizing up a tricky putt.

The top of the banking still needs attending to, but it looks as though there could be a root break problem in parts so I'll have to dig a little deeper into that

The grass seeds are still soaking, and I'll give the area some attention with the sarrel roller and a second light top dressing just before sowing them. Being so tiny they really want to be surface sown rather than covered, unlike the much larger seeds of ryegrasses.

[_bryan_]

Jagnet, if anyone ever deserved an MBE for lawncare, it would be you! Absolutely crazy dedication to a lawn! I'm hoping a quarter of your effort will give me what I want!

[jagnet]

well I figure that as a pastime it's cheaper and healthier than coke and hookers, and almost as much fun

Looking at your lawn, I'd suggest that with the slope you have if you do start from scratch then plan on protecting the fresh seed with germination mats / fleece / hessian to start with. Without existing grasses for protection then rain could quite easily see much of your fresh seed washed downhill. Whilst different, the tonsure look to your lawn may not be what you had planned.

Looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Is it just me or is that seating area crying out for some kind of throne up there? I've been watching too much Game of Thrones again haven't I?

[MGJohn]

After forty years of simple maintenance and mainly cutting, my lawns front and rear are now more daisy, clover and dandelions than grass. Not to mention ever larger shallow mounds created by Yellow Meadow Ants .. Lasius flavus, Where did they come from? Flying Queens colonising like the Black Ants Lasius niger (Oh-er racist ) which infest my patio slabs this time of year with hundreds of freshly emerged queens this month. Correction... thousands. Those queen and King mating flights high into the warm sky this month saw hundreds of "Anting" Seagulls overhead. Hundreds, nay thousands... never seen anything like it.,. Took a few pictures of the circling Gull filled sky overhead.

Back to the lawns. Selective weedkillers were one time available for lawns. In the H&S UK we now live in are such lawn treatments or other effective remedies still available ?

I'd like to return my lawns to the nice green swards they once were. Any advice appreciated.

[jagnet]

MGJohn said:

Back to the lawns. Selective weedkillers were one time available for lawns. In the H&S UK we now live in are such lawn treatments or other effective remedies still available ?

Fortunately they are Resolva and Verdone lawn weedkillers are both available off most shelves and do a decent job of it. I'd get one in a concentrate, and the other in a ready spray. What the first fails to finish, the second should do the job. Which way around doesn't really matter too much.

Once the weeds are dealt with I'd feed and overseed to thicken the lawn and help prevent the weeds returning. I'd give some thought to scarifying and aerating as well, especially as this is the ideal time to be doing so.

With a nice healthy lawn the weeds become much less of a problem.